Jamil Mahmud

Over 14,000 Bangladeshi migrant workers have returned home since April from 10 countries, showed data of Expatriates’ Welfare Desk at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport.

Thousands of readymade garment workers in Gazipur have been passing days in uncertainty as over four dozen factories remain closed for more than two months in the coronavirus fallout.

After a day’s hard work, Omar Faruque Shipon spends time from evening to night raising awareness about coronavirus, which greatly helps his fellow Bangladeshi migrant workers in Singapore.

Many Bangladeshi migrant workers are going through a tough time in Iraq due to the shutdown enforced in the country.

Human trafficking to Libya from Bangladesh and torture of victims for ransom have been quite common for years but such crimes come to light only after a terrible tragedy.

Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen yesterday said the government demanded the Libyan authorities quickly investigate and punish those who killed 26 Bangladeshis and four Africans in a “revenge attack”.

Some 87 percent of 558 returnee migrant workers do not have income opportunities amid the shutdown enforced to contain coronavirus spread, said a Brac Migration Programme report.

Some 7,000 to 8,000 Bangladeshi migrant workers in Bahrain have lost their jobs due to economic shutdown enforced by the country’s government to contain coronavirus pandemic, an official at Bangladesh embassy in Manama said yesterday.

Over one lakh Bangladeshis in different Middle Eastern countries are suffering acute hunger while many other Bangladeshis have become unemployed amid the shutdown of economies across the world.

Lipi Akter started processing her migration to Saudi Arabia in early March, expecting financial solvency there will help her raise her children back home.

The coronavirus fallout and slumping oil prices may lead to the deportation of up to 10 lakh Bangladeshi migrant workers from Saudi Arabia in the next three to five years, according to the Bangladesh mission there.

The government of Bahrain this month declared an amnesty programme for undocumented migrant workers to get regularised. This should come as good news for undocumented Bangladeshi workers in the Gulf nation, about 30,000 of whom are expected to avail the programme which runs until December 31 this year.

Government authorities in Bahrain have recently started moving thousands of Bangladeshi migrant workers from their squalid living facilities to makeshift establishments, to contain the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Although the state-owned Bangladesh Television has started broadcasting in Middle East and North Africa recently on a pilot basis, private TV channels from Bangladedsh are still out of reach in the regions, limiting some 70 lakh Bangladeshi migrants from knowing about their homeland’s present situation amid coronavirus outbreak.

With several thousand Bangladeshis passing days in hardship in stranded situations in India for over a month, the government yesterday urged Bangladeshi citizens to have patience, assuring them of their gradual repatriation after bringing back patients from South India.

More than 4,300 undocumented Bangladeshi migrant workers are waiting to be repatriated from Kuwait, after they applied under a special amnesty declared by the Gulf country to reduce migrant population amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Several thousand Bangladeshi migrant workers in the Middle East, Italy and some Southeast Asian countries are facing acute shortage of food and other essential commodities as their income sources remained shut amid shutdown enforced by the countries to contain coronavirus spread.

The Singapore government has promised food, wages, and treatment costs of Bangladeshi migrant workers who are in isolation in the country’s dormitories.

On top of the coronavirus crisis and the feared economic aftershock, Bangladesh is now facing pressure from different countries to take back undocumented Bangladeshis working there.

Many of about 30,000 Bangladeshis living in Spain have been spending days in uncertainty with no source of income as the country has been under a nationwide lockdown since March 14 to contain the coronavirus outbreak.